Aston Villa salvaged a point in a 1-1 draw with Sheffield Utd on Friday night, as Nicolo Zaniolo’s late goal prevented it from being an even more disappointing outcome.
Despite dominating possession and controlling the game throughout, Villa were unable to find a breakthrough as our former striker Cameron Archer broke the deadlock for the visitors late on.
READ MORE: What Unai Emery said on Villa’s draw with Sheffield Utd, disallowed goal
That in turn looked like it would end our unbeaten home run, but to their credit, the players showed character and finally some decisive quality in the final third to grab an equaliser and ensure we took something from the game.
Focus will now switch to Man Utd on Boxing Day, and it’s hoped that we’ll be closer to being at full strength for that encounter at Old Trafford.
Important learning experience for evolving Villa
While there is of course disappointment and frustration over dropping points in a game where we dominated and felt confident of getting a win, it will hopefully prove to be an important lesson for us in the long run.
More opposition sides will adopt the same approach against us moving forward as our style of play and quality demands more respect, and so Unai Emery and the players will have to adapt and be smarter when trying to break teams down.
We lost our way in the period leading up to the goal we conceded, and so maintaining our structure, control and composure particularly when frustration builds will be fundamental in the future to get the results we desire. It’s important we have that adaptability and versatility in the side to find ways to break teams down if that opener doesn’t come early to change the complexion of the game.
Emery as classy as ever in his assessment
It would have been justified for the Villa boss to display his frustration with the decisions from the officials, as we’ve seen from other managers this season, given some of the calls that went against us.
However, he remained calm and classy as usual as although he conceded that he disagreed with the decision on our disallowed goal in particular, VAR will work for us and against us over the course of the campaign.
His experience, level-headedness and leadership will continue to be critical as the season goes on and we face further adversity, and it will be pivotal he transmits that to the players to help them deal with situations better.
Villa need to curb frustration at times
While we should have learned lessons from the win at Brentford in terms of dealing with frustration and tempers flaring, there were a couple of incidents in this game too.
Douglas Luiz took exception to one challenge in the first half before Jhon Duran was the subject of a late VAR review, albeit a nonsensical one, similarly to some of the other decisions.
Nevertheless, we have to manage our emotions and temperament better, as it impacted our overall performance in that we lost a bit of control and things became more chaotic, and that resulted in the visitors getting their late goal.
Zaniolo starting to find some goalscoring form
That’s two goals in his last three appearances now for Zaniolo to back up his effort against Zrinjski, and it’s a real boost to see him starting to find his feet.
Villa have quality and depth in this squad, and so it’s important that perhaps when some are either struggling for form or fitness, others step up and produce when given an opportunity.
Moussa Diaby is going through a little patch where he isn’t as consistently decisive as we’d hope he would be, while Jacob Ramsey is still working his way back to his peak condition and form. To have Zaniolo come off the bench and rescue a point with a well-taken goal is huge for him and the team.
Torres a big miss despite Lenglet impressing
Clement Lenglet was impressive again in defence, but there’s no doubt we missed the influence of Pau Torres in building our play out from the back.
It was a similar issue in midfield without Boubacar Kamara, but such is the class and technical ability of the Spanish centre-half, we do rely on him, particularly against sides who are content to sit deep and in numbers, to help us pick the lock.
We’ll hopefully have him back against Man Utd, but it could be argued that he was a bigger loss in this game given the nature of the contest and how we controlled possession and dominated, but couldn’t find a way through until the very end.
